If movies are a travelogue, the Global Film Initiative is a whirlwind tour of life all over the developing world.

This year's touring mini-festival -- with films from Argentina, Brazil, China, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Morocco and Mozambique -- kicks off Friday for a weeklong run at the Broadway Centre Cinemas, 111 E. 300 South, Salt Lake City.

The Global Film Initiative, launched in 2002, aims to show new films that tell stories of life in impoverished nations -- with programs that go beyond screenings to educational outreach in communities across the United States. This is the sixth year the GFI program has played in Salt Lake City.

Here are the 10 films in this year's program:

Getting Home (Luo Ye Gui Gen) » A comedy, directed and co-written by Zhang Yang, about a Chinese construction worker who goes to great lengths to fulfill a co-worker's dying wish: to be buried in the Three Gorges region. Directed by Zhang Yang.

I Am From Titov Veles (Jas Sum Od Titov Veles) » A drama, written and directed by Teona Strugar Mitevska, about three sisters struggling to escape the decay of their Macedonian hometown.

Mutum » A coming-of-age story (directed and co-written by Sandra Kogut) about a boy on a remote Brazilian farm, on a day when he realizes hard truths about his parents.

My Time Will Come (Cuando Me Toque a Mí) » In this drama from Ecuador -- directed and co-written by Víctor Arregui -- a morgue doctor, who develops an oddly intimate relationship with the cases he handles, has to confront his connections to the living and the dead.

The Photograph » An Indonesian brothel singer and prostitute rents a room from an elderly photographer in need of an apprentice in this drama by writer-director Nan Achnas.

Possible Lives (Las Vidas Posibles) » In director/co-writer Sandra Gugliotta's drama, an Argentine woman embarks on a desperate search for her missing husband, finding a man with an uncanny resemblance to her spouse -- but with another name and a wife.

Sleepwalking Land (Terra Sonâmbula) » A boy orphaned in Mozambique's civil war searches through the countryside for his mother, accompanied by an elderly storyteller and guided by a dead man's diary, in this drama from writer-director Teresa Prata.

Song From the Southern Seas (Pesn' Juzhnykh Morej) » Two couples -- one Russian, one Kazakh -- live side-by-side harmoniously in Kazakhstan's remote steppes, until the day the fair-skinned Russians have a dark-skinned baby, in this drama written and directed by Marat Surulu.

Those Three (An Seh) » Three conscripts desert their training camp to escape in the frozen wilds of northern Iran in this drama written and directed by Naghi Nemati.

What a Wonderful World » Faouzi Bensaïdi wrote and directed this drama from Morocco about a prostitute whose best friend, a female traffic cop, falls in love with her best customer, a contract killer (played by Bensaïdi).

In addition to screenings at the Broadway, selected films will screen at Orson Spencer Hall on the University of Utah campus on Sept. 13 and 20 -- and at the Park City Library Center, 1255 Park Ave. in Park City, on Sept. 16, 17, 22 and 24. For more details, visit globalfilm.org.